Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 78.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2023-06-05 14:55:49+00:00
From: Manfred Thaller <manfred.thaller@uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.15: two questions
Dear Willard,
it is some time since you asked these questions, having been more or
less incommunicado for some time, I'd nevertheless try to not so much
answer, but comment on one of them.
To recapitulate, you wrote:
> But still one of them asked me, "So... what IS digital
> humanities?" I was not lost for words, ...
...
> Ruminating on the incident this morning has led me to wonder how others
> answer that question in brief. So, in a nutshell, what is it? Does anyone
> have a good one or two-sentence response?
No, I have NO good one or two sentence answer. But I'd like to
speculate, where one could go to find one.
Reacting to the same question Tim Smithers wrote:
> people using computation to do the kinds of research
> scholars in the Humanities do.
Well, around the year 2000 I'd unreservedly endorsed that answer, and
with some growing reluctance I even used it myself in certain
rhetorical situations until ca. 2015, becoming more and more
dissatisfied with it, as I increasingly encountered items labeled "DH"
where I found it difficult to discover the "Digital", the "Humanities"
or both.
Then the scales fell from my eyes when I read "Alternative
Historiographies of the Digital Humanities" edited by Dorothy Kim and
Adeline Koh, punctum books, 2021. There Dorothy Kim writes in the
editor's introduction on p. 24:
> Alternative Historiographies of the Digital Humanities resists
> a linear history of the digital humanities — a straight line from
> the beginnings of humanities computing. By discussing alterna-
> tives histories of the digital humanities that address queer gam-
> ing; feminist game studies praxis; Cold War military-industrial
> complex computation; the creation of the environmental hu-
> manities; monolingual discontent in DH; the hidden history of
> DH in English studies; radical media praxis; cultural studies and
> DH; indigenous futurities; Pacific Rim postcolonial DH; the issue
> of scale and DH; Black feminist praxis; Global African feminist
> protest; Black feminist archives; and the racialized silences in
> topic modeling; the radical, indigenous, feminist histories of the
> digital database; and the possibilities for an antifascist DH, this
> collection hopes to re-set discussions of the DH and its attend-
> ing straight, white origin myths.
This really was true enlightenment. All my confusion, why at events
labeled DH I had to listen to panels discussing neither the Humanities
nor anything related to computers was suddenly resolved. The Digital
Humanities are all that which Kim & Koh list, I am happy to agree.
It's just that I am not particularly interested in most of it.
But that does not answer your question - how DO you answer the question
what something is, which you cannot identify with?
I have no real two sentence answer, but when I am asked a similar
question, I usually use a formula like: "Well, you know, that is a very
wide field. MY personal interest in it are all things
<fill-in-personal-definition;-Tim's-qualifying>."
If I am not directly asked, I do not use the term - or use it in "the so
called Digital Humanities".
Tim, by the way:
> What if, instead of Digital Humanities, people had named it
> Computational Humanities, like Computational Biology, for
> example? (Yuk!)
Be strong now: A short check on Google will confirm, that in Europe
[even in KCL, by the way] the use of the terms "Computational
Humanities", "Computational Literary Studies" etc. is rapidly expanding,
gaining conferences, journals, chairs at universities and departments
dedicated to it. If feel reassured by that developemtn, that I am not
the only one believing, that the field I am identifying with has
something to do with the usage of computers and the Humanities. The only
reason, I am not advocating the term more enthusiastically is, that if
you look at the program of most of the events labeled CH, you see a
throwback into the nineties, when Humanities Computing had a tendency to
concentrate almost exclusively on literary and linguistic stuff, which
excluded so many new developments, that everybody was looking for a
wider term, which covered other interesting things as well.
Apologies to everybody, who is tired of this whole "what is DH"
discussion. But I am afraid, we are all damned to repeat it until
doomsday, until we replace a label having become meaningless by ... not
another label!
But possibly a discussion, what computational - or if you want: digital
- technologies should do for the Humanities, how you can fairly evaluate
achievements and how you can meaningfully teach it? And how as a
consequence that one- / two-sentence question Willard asked for might
look like? And what is a wonderful achievement and a goal worthy to
dedicate your life to, but not part of "it"?
Best regards,
Manfred
Am 12.05.23 um 07:36 schrieb Humanist:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 15.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2023-05-12 05:29:28+00:00
> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> Subject: two questions
>
> Yesterday I and a three or four colleagues attended a session designed
> to help first-year PhD students make the most of their doctoral studies.
> In a university with a well-known department of digital humanities it's
> not surprising that many would be curious about the field when I
> introduced myself, some show genuine interest and a couple have some
> involvement. But still one of them asked me, "So... what IS digital
> humanities?" I was not lost for words, but evidently my answer was
> insufficiently simple to keep her attention before she wandered off and
> someone else started asking whether what he was involved with qualified.
> Ruminating on the incident this morning has led me to wonder how others
> answer that question in brief. So, in a nutshell, what is it? Does anyone
> have a good one or two-sentence response?
>
> In a subsequent conversation, AI came up, as might be expected. A
> student wanted to know whether AI posed a threat, and if so, what he
> might do about it. Given the number of well-funded 'bad actors' involved
> with AI, the answer to the first was not difficult to put into one word,
> then expand that into a range of examples. But what particularly
> interested me was the second question, how to intervene. One academic I
> know advises us to get involved in the work of AI labs, but that seems
> rather impractical for all but the very few. So, my question here: what
> can we do?
>
> Comments most welcome.
>
> Yours,
> WM
> --
> Willard McCarty,
> Professor emeritus, King's College London;
> Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
> www.mccarty.org.uk
--
Prof.em.Dr. Manfred Thaller
formerly University at Cologne /
zuletzt Universität zu Köln
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